Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The latest post over at "the Log" (as the hip kids are calling it) is on the slogans of the presidential candidates in the two major parties. Not all have clear, established slogans, but Mark Liberman observes:

Among the 9 slogans in both parties, there is not a single verb (leaving out the quasi-adjectival participle forms proven and experienced).

Update: 7:15 am: Utterly true, verbs are out, passée, done, over. An ad for the new Palm Centro (A30 of today's NYT) has this headline:

Quadruplify yourself.

Nothing is more 10 minutes ago than a PDA. (One of our contributors used to use one, but gave it up and now writes stuff directly on his 'palm', as in the inner part of the hand.) And -ify? To amplify and diversify and exemplify all had their day, but puh-lease. (Quadruplify does get a few g-hits.) Oh yeah, the four features? E-mail, chat, text and google maps? Be still my heart.

Why, world, why? A verbier world is a better world.

Image from here, and that cover really deserved an award. And another one now for being so tragically right.